


Hanahaki

by TooManyPsuedonyms



Series: Mobile Thoughts [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Fictional Disease, M/M, One-Shot, Or Is It?, Unrequited, Vagueness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 12:59:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14020776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyPsuedonyms/pseuds/TooManyPsuedonyms
Summary: Supposedly, there's a disease in which a person suffering unrequited love begins to grow flowers in their lungs.





	Hanahaki

**Author's Note:**

> I just LOVE the idea of the Hanahaki Disease. 
> 
> Amazing, and Hannibal, partially growing up with his Japanese aunt--of course he's probably heard of it. Right?
> 
> Love it.
> 
> ***EDIT***
> 
>  
> 
> Hey there!! Guess what??? A lovely reader SweetTeaTime translated this fic into Russian!   
> The link is below and you can also check out the comments as well!
> 
> https://ficbook.net/readfic/7465789 
> 
>  
> 
> To me, this is an amazing honor and I can only thank this person so much for taking the time to translate. Sometimes I can barely speak English well enough--but to read AND write in TWO langauages at least?! FANTASTIC. Thank you thank you, you amazing, smart, and thoughtful person! 
> 
>  
> 
> So. Please, enjoy everyone, in as many languages as possible. Anytime anyone wants to translate my fics. Please, go ahead and leave me the link for me to update the fic with. Thank you! <3

Hannibal is a doctor, Will thinks. He’ll know what’s wrong.

 

Will’s fever progresses to a coughing fit and he scrambles for the phone. He’s too weak to reach much farther than his hallway and collapses, struggling to draw breath.

 

His throat feels... clogged. His lungs heavy, and air catches against something scratching in his throat. Will’s vision dims and the world around him—already so quiet in the night—fades to a dull roar of blood rushing in his ears as he panics.

 

He blacks out, gasping.

 

When he wakes up in the morning, his lungs ache and his larynx burns with each shallow breath. Something thick and syrupy sits on his tongue. He wipes blood and ripped, clumpy messes of flower petals off his cracked lips.

 

“What...?” he asks, voice broken and quiet.

 

He doesn’t call Hannibal.

 

He has to be hallucinating again.

 

...

 

Will tells himself that he’s imagining it. His chest aches only because he _imagines_ some heinous flower has rooted itself inside his body. It’s not really medically possible. Obviously it has to do with his—his unprofessional feelings.

 

He developed them working this—Whatever this was. Whatever Hannibal was. Whatever Hannibal _is_... courting him with death and corpses and shared meals wrapped up as elegant presents. But Hannibal is—He is—Psychopaths are incapable of love.

 

Will knows this too well.

 

...

 

Will is tired, breath short and he tries to tell himself that he’s fine. There is nothing clawing its way into his heart. Pushing at his lungs. Tangling inside his rib cage. Even if he presses his hands along his breast bone, feels the pierce of thorns and twisting branches... it’s not _really_ there.

 

“Will?” Hannibal says his name so gently... it sounds like he cares. Like he’d reach over—if Will allowed—and would... would touch him. Softly. So soft and tender as he presses Will’s own name into his aching body, branding him with warm, _loving_ breath.

 

“Hmm?” Will doesn’t have the energy for more than the barest of acknowledgement. It should be dangerous to be so tired, so weak, around Hannibal. Stupidly, he feels... safe. He’d surrender to it—Hannibal’s knife. His bite...

 

“You,” Hannibal pauses and Will feels the weight of the sofa dip as the doctor sits by his hip. His eyes flutter open and he stares unabashed at Hannibal’s sharp, strangely handsome features, “You are not breathing evenly.”

 

“I know...”

 

“Are you ill?” he does not hesitate to flatten his wide palm across Will’s forehead. The touch is cool and the brief pulse of Hannibal’s heart makes Will’s skip a beat.

 

He coughs at the suddenness of touch, of his own aching heart, covering his mouth in surprise. He turns away, fingers feeling wet and something is clinging in-between the webbing. Will stares dumbly at the seemingly vivid blood red and stark white petals spotted black. Something tastes both sweet and rotten as he shows Hannibal.

 

“I think...” he wheezes carefully, “That my brain is melting. It feels like somethings growing in my chest. I’m choking on _flowers_...”

 

Hannibal stares in disbelief. Will tries to smile, letting his hand fall to his lap. He doesn’t bother wiping away the nonexistent blood and flora. It can’t really be there. He just rests again.

 

“It’ll pass. I’m taking my meds so—“

 

“It’s real.”

 

Will’s eyes open again.

 

Hannibal’s face is impassive as he looks at Will’s reclining form.

 

“No, it’s not.”

 

“Will, you’re—“

 

“People don’t just—just vomit flowers, Hannibal. It’s not—“

 

“Who are you in love with?”

 

Will’s mouth snaps shut in absolute disbelief and his blue eyes are wide in his paling face.

 

Hannibal _knows_.

 

It’s so dangerous.

 

“No—it—I don’t—it’s not like that. I don’t—I am not in love.”

 

Hannibal raises from the sofa, walking toward his massive bookshelves and rigidly begins pulling ancient volumes and other medical texts from various places. Will watches with breath ragged and when Hannibal finally returns, shows him such beautiful, horrid diagrams and depictions of plants growing from chests and skulls and flowing out of mouths until suddenly Will has fallen to his knees and this time it’s another panic attack that steals all the oxygen from him.

 

Hannibal’s large hands are wrapping around the back of Will’s neck, tipping his head back as he gasps for air. It should be helping, this movement, this position, but their closeness, it feels too intimate and Will’s eyes slip closed as tears leaked down his cheeks.

 

“N—No... I don’t... I don’t want this...”

 

It will be alright, Hannibal whispers. But.

 

Will could die—he _will_ die according to all this evidence scattered around them.

 

...

 

It’s called Hanahaki Diease. A mysterious illness that dates back farther than feudal era Japan. Most modern doctors consider it superstition at best or an aggressive fungal infection that physically resembles floral spores in the chest cavity at worst.

 

Hannibal tells him it probably has something to do with an overabundance of the chemicals that are present in the production of... well, _love_ hormones. The only connection to the disease being people who contract Hanahaki are always victims of unrequited love.

 

Will places his head in his hands and Hannibal insists that Will stay with him while he searches his various collections of medical journals for possible cures.

 

“Has anyone ever survived Hanahaki Disease?” Will quietly asks. He’s sipping on some sort of acidic tea in the hopes this will slow and sear the flowers working their way up Will’s trachea.

 

Hannibal sits across from him, eyes darting away as Will brings his gaze to Hannibal’s stoic mask. “I only know of the folk-tales my aunt would tell me...”

 

“I see...”

 

“I—I will find a cure.”

 

Will sips his tea and says nothing. His heart slows and the tea tastes too sweet—like rose perfume. Hannibal used no sugar. Will watched him make it, sure and measured. He tries not to think too long about why Hannibal is insistent.

 

...

 

This development causes the courting to stop, all of the investigations into Hannibal’s possible crimes to grind to a halt. Jack calls him into his office. Will doesn’t know what to say other than—

 

“I’m sick.”

 

“Sick how?” the man rails, “You have medicine!”

 

“It’s my lungs. My—My heart.”

 

Jack can’t say anything to that. Just demands him to stay away from Hannibal while the illness rampages through him. His undercover mission too delicate to let hamper traditional means, and if Hannibal knows—if he suspects a thing while Will is weakening…

 

Will thinks it might be a good idea.

 

...

 

He spends his time searching the internet for answers. The prospects are grim. Many say the disease will wither when the object of affection returns the feelings of love. Given Will’s condition, the specific conditions, it appears—for him—that this will become terminal. The thorns confirm the hopeless as they scratch all along his insides.

 

Will spends his nights hacking flower petals. He moves them in shapes along his bedsheets. They stick and dry brown in the splatters of blood.

 

It almost looks like a human heart.

 

...

 

Strangely, or perhaps not so, Hannibal doesn’t leave Will to die… or at least, not have the last of wither completely into misery as such beautiful things blossom wretchedly in his unworthy body. Hannibal begins to bringing Will food, he makes him walk in the sunshine, and he makes Will drink all sorts of bitter fluids.

 

“Thought you might like this—“ Will says, scratchy from all the coughing, while Hannibal is dapping the sap from the corner of Will’s mouth.

 

“Like what? Taking care of you?”

 

“No,” Will’s laugh hurts, deep in his chest, and his eyes water, “I’m marinating. My meat will be honeyed. My blood sweet—a rosé.”

 

Hannibal says nothing, for once. Will smiles, sardonic in his victory. Hannibal tips Will’s head back, inspects his neck. Lightly pressed against the straining Adam’s apple. It hurts. Something had wrapped around the bone. It’s strangling him from the inside out.

 

Will would like for Hannibal to crush him now, while it’s still so sweet... so beautiful. He can feel that something will turn soon... and he doesn’t want the blood to turn sour and bitter. Doesn’t want to become rotted meat for anyone.

 

“Maybe you...” Will thinks aloud, “Should just cut it out. All of it... I’d rather it be—“

 

Will can’t finish his pitiful words, wheezing and hacking. He jerks forward, into Hannibal. Claws his hands along the man’s wrists, up his biceps, before he shudders into Hannibal’s shoulders.

 

“I can’t do that...”

 

“Too far gone...?” Will croaks out. Hannibal shakes his head. “Then why not?”

 

“It’ll remove every trace of love inside of you...”

 

Will stays still in Hannibal’s hold, “... every...?”

 

“Call it selfish,” Hannibal murmurs, hands brushing along the back of Will’s sweaty neck, “But... I have rather hoped that in the future, you’d—I want you to have feelings for me.”

 

Will is too weak to push him away.

 

“That _is_ selfish... Hannibal... I’m dying. I don’t want this...”

 

Hannibal just nods sagely, holds Will tightly as he coughs. “Wait. Just a little longer...”

 

Will wordlessly agrees, though he knows there is no cure. Not in the man holding him.

 

It’s too dangerous to say aloud.

 

He’ll wait… for now.

 

...

 

Will is in Hannibal’s kitchen, looking for the fresh pot of acidic home brew that has been mildly affective in slowly the Hanahaki growth. He sees the glittering collection of too sharp knives sitting placidly along the drying rack. He picks up a small one—reminds him more of a scalpel than a cooking utensil.

 

Will is in so much pain. His breath won’t come and all he can think about how much easier it would be to drive the knife into his windpipe. Create a passage for air. He could do it. He could—He—

 

Hannibal’s hands are wrapped around the wrist holding the blade and then upon Will’s tear soaked face. He’s hiccupping, he wants breath, and he trying to beg. Nothing leaves his lips but blood and flowers.

 

“Tell me. Tell me who.”

 

Will shakes his head. He drops the knife and catches the petals as he coughs harder and harder as the branches thicken. “Ha—Hanni—Han—-bal!”

 

“Will—“

 

“P—Pul-leese—!”

 

“Just a name. Tell me. Tell me who couldn’t love you. I will find them—I will find them and ki—“

 

“Do—Don—!”

 

Hannibal’s fingers are soothing are they run across Will’s lips… at first. Then, they dive into his mouth, ruthlessly pulling at the flowery plumage. His eyes are wild and bloody as he reaches in to carve out a pathway for air.

 

“I will feed you their heart! I will plant my knife there! I will choke them until their breath is done! They will know exactly how you feel! I will not—I will not lose you to some heartless—I will— _Will_!”

 

Will is crying, hands weakly fluttering along Hannibal’s dress shirt. He’s pulled buttons. He’s feeling skin now. Will’s choking and he wants Hannibal to know, with his last breath, _exactly_ what this monster is saying to him. What he’s promised Will at this moment.

 

“A name! I want _the name_! Tell me so I can—“

 

“H-Hannibal...!” Will begs, biting along the elegant fingers scratching against his tongue.

 

Will’s own fingers rub along Hannibal’s collar bone reverently. His eyes are dimming as he pleads without words for the other man to understand.

 

Hannibal’s own breath shudders as Will, unexpectantly, feels it. Deep beneath the marbled flesh under his fingertips... there are thorns growing... Sharp and piercing as they prick out and into Will’s calloused pads.

 

The petals turn to ash as Will keeps repeating the same name over and over again.

 

Hannibal.

 

Hannibal.

 

 _Hannibal_...

 

The world grows dark and dim and as everyone knows, very few flowers grow in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it!
> 
>  
> 
> ***EDIT***
> 
>  
> 
> Hey there!! Guess what??? A lovely reader SweetTeaTime translated this fic into Russian!   
> The link is below and you can also check out the comments as well!
> 
> https://ficbook.net/readfic/7465789 
> 
>  
> 
> To me, this is an amazing honor and I can only thank this person so much for taking the time to translate. Sometimes I can barely speak English well enough--but to read AND write in TWO langauages at least?! FANTASTIC. Thank you thank you, you amazing, smart, and thoughtful person! 
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks so much!


End file.
